Ladders are ubiquitous devices used in a wide variety of commercial and residential circumstances. In some applications, such as during the intermediate stages of construction of structures (e.g. houses, buildings, aircraft, etc.) it may be desirable for ladders to be used prior to the installation of a uniform floor surface. This may present a challenge because most ladders are not designed to operate in the absence of a uniform floor surface.
For example, certain painting and sealing operations on aircraft sections often involve working over open floor beams at heights requiring ladders. Due to the nature of the paint and seal process, the installation of temporary flooring may not be practical. In order to resolve this problem, step ladders have been equipped with elongated rails that have been bolted or nailed to the bottoms of the legs and which extend between and beyond the front and rear legs to serve as supports for the ladders over the open floor beams.
Although desirable results have been achieved using such prior art methods, there is room for improvement. For example, it is undesirable to permanently modify the ladder by bolting or nailing the elongated rails onto the legs for various reasons, including, for example, because the ladder is thereafter rendered unable to fold up for storage. The resulting ladder assembly thereafter requires additional storage space than unaltered ladders, and may be unsuitable for other applications in which ladders are required, such as in relatively small spaces. The transport of such ladder assemblies from one work area to another typically requires more effort than the transport of unaltered ladders. Therefore, ladder support apparatus and methods that at least partially mitigate these effects would be useful.